I’ve mentioned before in earlier posts that I like some of the work of the early twentieth century Soviet Suprematist artists headed by Kazimer Malevich (if not the politics behind the work). Anyway, this image isn’t so much influenced as it is a blatant rip-off. Hey, the guy had some good ideas.

Once again, I’ve broken the rule that a photo must have a central point of interest. So it goes. Looking out my window, I can observe a sea of corn tassels out in the fields. It’s the sameness of them with just subtle variations that I find interesting.

Modeste Moussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ was based on drawings and paintings of his friend Viktor Hartmann. One section of the piece was titled ‘Two Jews: rich and poor’. Over the years of publications of the original piano piece and subsequent orchestrations by various composers, the names mentioned in Moussorgsky’s manuscript – ‘Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuyle’ – have been used as the title.

The musical themes of the piece show one ponderous and self-important man and a smaller, less assured man running around like a little terrier yipping at at someone’s heels.

I didn’t start out with the music in mind, but as I worked with the image, the relationship grew on me (although I don’t want to push too hard on the terrier-fireplug metaphor).

When I made this image, I liked the bright neon lights, but the rest of the image was dark and drab. Playing around with HDR tone mapping brightened the other colors and evened out some of the tonal values to match the lights.

The Kankakee Municipal Band was rehearsing the other night and one of the pieces we played was a medley of songs associated with Bob Hope. When I was living in Champaign-Urbana in the late sixties and early seventies, Bob would play the Assembly Hall every few years, usually on a football weekend. I saw him several times and I brought my camera on this occasion. I’m not sure of the date (the slides were processed in January of 1972, but they could have been in the camera for a few weeks or months before I sent them out to the lab.) Bob used to use the names of local towns as part of his act and I think he particularly enjoyed referring to Tuscola and Pesotum.